


Here in Spain I am a Spaniard

by feverbeats



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-26
Updated: 2011-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:45:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's tried a dozen first names in her head now, always when she's drunk, and none of them fit. It's not as though anyone calls her by her first name as it is, for which she is immensely thankful. Arthur does have that unfortunate little habit of calling her <i>Mr. Eames</i>, but she'll let it slide because the alternative is confrontation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here in Spain I am a Spaniard

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warnings: Violence, breathplay, other edgeplaly (murder during sex in dreams), transphobia.

**Part One**

“That so? ‘m from Whitechapel, too,” the young man with the knit hat and the tattoos says.

“Oh yeah?” the man across from him shouts over the noise of the bar. “Not half shit, eh? Sorry, didn’t catch your name the first time ‘round.”

“Black,” the young man says. “Kevin Black.”

The other bloke nods. “I’m Danny.”

The babble in here is too loud for much more conversation, so they make do with sitting elbow-to-elbow in the noisy pub and watching the match.

After a few more beers, Danny says, “Hey, gonna do the pub quiz? My mate Joe isn’t here yet, and we could use someone else.”

Kevin grins. “Sure. I’m fucking brilliant at pub quiz.”

Actually, he is. He’s acquired enough knowledge from a collection of places that he’s probably the best on the team. He falls down a bit on sports, but Danny’s there to pick up the slack.

After they come in second, Danny asks, “How the hell do you know so much about music, anyhow?”

Kevin shrugs and gives tipping on his stool a go. “Dunno. I listen to most of those bands.”

“Yeah? What else do you listen to?”

Kevin thinks. “Erm. The Verve?”

Danny nods approval.

“I mostly like really shit pop groups,” Kevin yells over the noise. “When I’m feeling really like pitching myself off a bridge, though, I listen to The Smiths.”

Kevin is twenty-two years old, his mum works in a shop, his dad is dead, and he has a sister. He’s got an East London accent and he hasn’t been to university. He likes cheap beer and hates the Spice Girls. He’s employed part-time and he has a girlfriend. He’s currently in this pub talking to Danny because he does indeed enjoy pub quizzes and he’s trying to make friends.

None of these things are true.

On the day Edward Robert Eames is born, not far from his home in Dorset, his father is so relieved to have a son that he goes home and drinks himself senseless.

From the time he’s little, Edward--called Teddy by his mother--notices things. He knows his family has money, but not as much as it looks like they’ve got, and not as much as they used to have. He notices the ways in which this matters, both to his parents and to the people around him. He notices that his parents don’t like each other very much.

Pretty soon, he notices other things, and he’d really rather he didn’t. Over time, he’s learned to ignore the constant low-grade ache of _something is very wrong_ until it blends into all the other hidden truths about himself.

He’s actually never had a girlfriend. He’s had a few people that pass as boyfriends, but most of his interpersonal relationships end in tears and quick exits.

He dropped out of school and then conned his way back in, earning a partially-legitimate degree in psychology (other people’s).

He goes to London, his only knowledge coming from telly, and mostly just _EastEnders_. Oasis’s _Be Here Now_ has just come out, and Eames is the only person in England who loves it. These things, these are true.

Eames is, by nature, a chatty drunk, but it’s a bit of his nature he tries very hard to suppress. If he were being true to his nature-- _he thinks_ \--he’d be slumped against Danny’s arm, talking cheerfully about how many fake IDs he has and how his hat is making his head itch.

As it is, he remains mostly upright, talking only about music as he scans the bar. He’s here looking for someone, and he’s getting sick of waiting. He feels ill, he’s drunk, and he hasn’t had enough sleep or food lately.

Then someone taps him on the shoulder and his day gets a lot worse.

He spins, still eminently the goofy pub patron, grinning. “Can I help you?”

A young man with a crew-cut and a perturbed frown is standing there, spine impossibly straight. Eames takes quick stock of the salient details: the kid can’t be more than eighteen, which means he might be easy to intimidate, but the confidence with which he stands suggests otherwise. He’s definitely armed. Most important of all, he’s in U.S. Army uniform. _Fuck_.

“Mr. Eames?” the young man says. “I’m Lieutenant Arthur Cowell. I need to speak with you.”

Here’s something else that’s true: the use of Somnacin is still tightly regulated by the American government, and it’s only meant for military use. The fact that it’s leaked into the criminal underworld and migrated overseas doesn’t seem to have convinced them it’s a lost cause yet. “Gladly,” Eames says, standing up and overbalancing against the kid on purpose. “Arthur. Lovely name. Can I call you Arthur?”

The young man hesitates fractionally. “No. Outside, Mr. Eames.”

Eames intensely dislikes being called _Mr. Eames_ , but he’s not about to show it. He’s too busy thinking of escape routes to be too concerned with anything else. If the army’s sent someone all the way across the Atlantic to find him specifically, that at least means he’s doing well for himself in the business. A little notoriety never hurt anyone, and that just means he’ll get more jobs. If he lives through this.

He turns and claps Danny on the shoulder. “If I’m not back in fifteen, call 999.” He makes sure to say it like a joke.

Outside, it’s fucking cold, and Eames wishes he were dressed in one of his personalities that involved more layers. If he’s doing to get shot or arrested, he’d like to do it in relative comfort. “So, what’s this about, then?” he asks.

The young man—Arthur, Eames reminds himself—squares his shoulders. “I’m here on behalf of the U.S. Military, Mr. Eames. We have reason to believe you have in your possession a large quantity of a substance strictly controlled by our government.”

Eames forces his eyebrows up. “Substance, eh? What’s that, then? Drugs?”

Arthur frowns as if he’s trying to work something out. “In a sense.” He grabs Eames’s wrist hard and shoves his sleeve up.

 _That’ll bruise,_ Eames thinks distantly, failing to twist away from the warm hands of the young man with the hidden gun.

Arthur looks intently at his arm. “What are these?”

Eames slides into junkie persona. “Fucking track marks, aren’t they?” he says, laughing. “I thought you army lads were supposed to be smart.”

“Mm.” Arthur lets go of his arm. “So either you’ve been shooting up heroin, or you’ve been shooting up Somnacin.”

“New one on me,” Eames says lightly.

Without warning, Arthur backhands him in the face, his body snapping into motion with what would be noticeable as grace if Eames weren’t now bleeding all over everything.

He wipes at his cheek with the back of his hand. “ _Fuck_. You’re very serious about all this. I’m afraid I haven’t got your bloody Somnacin.” He realizes too late that he’s dropped the accent.

Arthur’s eyes narrow even further, making him look like some sort of vicious little animal. “I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”

So Eames bolts. Among his grab-bag of life skills is the ability to move faster than it looks like he should be able to.

He takes off, and he manages to get a block before Arthur catches up. The thing about military men, he laments as he’s slammed against a closed storefront, is that they’re better than he is at almost anything physical.

He tries fighting back, but while he can run, he can’t really fight, and Arthur is good. He gets Eames on the ground embarrassingly fast, digging an army boot into his ribs. Then he kicks Eames in the stomach hard, and Eames rolls into a ball, completely useless instinct taking over and earning him another kick, this time in the ribs.

He coughs, wishing it were warmer so the streets wouldn’t be as empty. The army takes their Somnacin seriously, apparently. Just as he’s about to make another bid for getting upright and escaping, he hears the roar of a vehicle coming down the road.

Arthur has stopped kicking him. Eames risks a glance up in time to see an unmarked white van screech to a halt a few feet from the edge of the sidewalk. “Well,” he says, “Didn’t know you lot were child molesters.”

Arthur looks down at him, his face a mix of confusion and irritation. “What?”

“The van,” Eames clarifies, but the situation as stopped being funny, as five men in uniform have hopped out of the van and are now looking extremely menacing.

One of them gives Arthur a stiff salute. “Sir? I think we’ve found him.”

“Hang on,” Eames protests as he’s hauled to his feet by two of the uniformed men, “Isn’t this a bit of an overreaction? The thing you’re accusing me of doesn’t really merit kidnapping in a country where you don’t even have jurisdiction. Does it?”

Arthur just looks at him, or a little past him. “Get him in the van,” he says.

Right, not the sort of person Eames is going to be able to negotiate with, then. He hates people like this, complete blank walls with no personality and no weak points. _Well_ , he thinks dimly as two of the soldiers grab his arms, _Maybe the back of the knees_. Also, the kid is fucking tiny, so Eames could probably, with two or three years of training, take him out. That’s meant to be comforting.

The way the kid watches him get tossed into the van is unnerving. “I’m getting bruises,” Eames confides when he skids half a foot after being thrown into the back of the van.

“Fine,” Arthur says. Eames was hoping he’d at least sound intrigued, because that’s an angle, too, but he just sounds bored. Eames is rarely bored, and never by people.

The van ride is relatively short, which is a mercy. Eames considers the fact that he may not survive this, and it doesn’t help that he’s got no idea what’s going on. Unless civilian use of Somnacin has become a much graver crime than he knew, he’s being treated quite unfairly. The American soldiers just point their guns at him and tell him to shut up when he tries to explain this, though.

They stop at an empty warehouse a few streets over. Eames finds the fact that he knows the area promising, but the fact that he’s being taken to an empty warehouse is less so. The soldiers shove him down in a chair like the professionals they are and then stand around looking awkward.

Arthur doesn’t look awkward, though. He just looks focused. “All right, Mr. Eames,” he says. “We need to discuss what you’ve done.”

 _Don’t tell them anything_ , Eames thinks, but he’d rather tell them things if it’ll clear up whatever misconception has taken place here. “What am I meant to have done?” he asks finally, because questions can’t be lies and he probably can’t be hit for asking them.

A tiny crease appears between Arthur’s eyes. He’s just a _kid_ , Eames thinks, and probably not actually used to being in charge. “The Somnacin you stole and transported across the border.”

One half of Eames’s mind is busy being smugly pleased, because you never _give out_ information in an interrogation, but the other half is too shocked to say anything. It’s the first time in years he’s been accused of something he _hasn’t_ done. He’s not quite mad enough to try a stunt like that, and he just bought the latest round of Somnacin off a chemist who ended up not being exactly reputable. Which is why he’s in this area at all, actually.

He recovers from being very concerned long enough to say, “I think you’ll find that whoever’s been feeding you information isn’t quite as reliable as you’d hoped.”

“You would say that, though,” Arthur says, still looking perplexed. Maybe Eames isn’t his ideal image of an international drug smuggler. At least they haven’t searched his pockets and found all the fake bills.

“I would, and it’s true,” Eames says, more concerned with taking stock of his surroundings. Getting out of here won’t be easy, but these kids are making him nervous. They probably feel like they’ve got something to prove, and that will make them trigger-happy. The last thing he needs is to get shot. He’s got an appointment to keep.

Arthur looks as though he’s considering something. Then he takes his ill-concealed gun out and hefts it casually in his hand.

Eames does some quick reassessment. This kid isn’t as inexperience as Eames originally thought, which makes it less likely that he’ll fire the thing off, but more likely that he knows how to get what he wants. “We should discuss this,” he tries again. “Rationally.”

Arthur hits him in the face with the gun.

Eames, because thinking fast is his main life-skill and the only reason he’s still alive, kicks his chair back as soon as the blow connects, rolling out of the way. He’s up and heading for the door before Arthur can spin his gun around and shoot.

And because Eames has apparently used up his run of luck for the day, or because Arthur is a good shot, he feels a bullet tear through his shoulder. Because he’d really prefer not to die, he keeps running.

Here is another truth about Eames: He’s been doing dream forgery since he was sixteen, and he knows a thing or two about blending in. Giving the soldiers the slip is almost too easy.

And another: When Eames meets Yusuf for the first time, he’s just coming off a week of seizures induced by a bad round of Somnacin, he’s been kicked, he’s been shot, and he’s slightly drunk.

He makes it back to the bar, thinking vaguely of telephones, and he sees the university student he was meant to be meeting.

“Nice to meet you. I’m looking for some Somnacin,” Eames says, and he coughs blood on Yusuf’s shirt.

*

It takes Yusuf a while to forgive Eames for that. Once Eames has recovered from being shot and Yusuf has recovered from being bled on, they make a good team. Yusuf refuses to go on jobs with Eames, though.

“You run with a bad crowd,” Yusuf tells him one night when they’re holed up in a hotel in Italy, avoiding the people Eames is about to do a job with.

“Yes,” Eames concedes from his bed, flicking through the TV channels aimlessly. “That’s how one makes obscene amounts of money. You should have seen the crowd I ran with when I got into dream-sharing.”

Yusuf leans on one elbow, looking mildly interested. “You can’t have been doing this for too long. It’s quite a recent field. I mean, for people other than the American military.”

This is a story Eames doesn’t much like telling, but he trusts Yusuf—as much as he trusts anyone. “Actually, I’ve been doing it since I was about sixteen.”

“Sixteen? But that must have been—”

“A while ago,” Eames agrees, giving up on the TV. He doesn’t really want to look at Yusuf, though. “When I left home, I fell into it from proper forgery. Turned out I had the knack in dreams, too.”

 _Left home_ means something different when you do it at sixteen, and Yusuf probably realizes that, but he keeps his mouth shut. That’s why he’s Eames’s friend, really. He just nods and motions for Eames to go on.

So Eames talks. He tells Yusuf about being sixteen and long-haired and stumbling upon the world of dream-sharing, back when it was just starting out. Even the military was still working through the quirks of it, and the Somnacin the criminal underworld of England had managed to get its hands on was often dangerous and unstable. Dreams themselves were rough-edged, harder to control, even for people who’d been doing it for ages.

The biggest dream industry, of course, was sex. Eames tells Yusuf this in a carefully neutral tone, but Yusuf is far from stupid.

“I imagine forgers were in high demand there,” he says.

“Mm,” Eames says. “They certainly were.”

You do a lot of things when you’re sixteen and running away and mostly just fucking _stupid_.

Eames clears his throat. “Anyway, you can imagine why dream prostitution would become so popular. You can have sex anywhere you want, and, with a forger, any _one_ you want. And there’s no risk of diseases or accidental pregnancies.”

“You sound like an advert,” Yusuf says, smiling faintly.

“Yeah,” Eames says, “Well.”

“That does explain your massive collection of lovely ladies.” Yusuf stands and goes to the mini-bar. “Want anything?”

Another reason Eames is friends with Yusuf: He doesn’t judge anyone for anything, except possibly keeping dangerous company. “No thanks. I don’t really drink.” _Anymore, anyway_.

Yusuf nods amicably. “I think all this is fascinating. You know, this explains why you’re so good at reading people. Not just the forgery, but if you’re, well, hooking—” He pauses, looking sheepish. “Sorry, is that not--?”

“Oh, who cares?” Eames says. “Hooking, sure. You get to know people well.”

There are things Eames leaves out, though. He doesn’t tell Yusuf about the numerous times he let himself get a little too involved in whatever role he was playing. She’d let herself be the tall blondes, the brunettes in heels, underage-looking Asian girls, the dozens of girls she’s not.

The last time she let herself get that involved, she woke gasping and feeling as though she was shoved into the wrong skin. It took her a moment to remember her name.

It took him a moment to remember his name.

He’s pulled out of worrying about that by Yusuf asking with what sounds like genuine curiosity, “Do you always forge women?”

Eames swallows, shying away from— “Not always.” Nearly always, though. When he was hooking, always.

Yusuf nods. “You’ve had a crazy life, Eames, my man.”

Eames has considered, briefly, falling for Yusuf. He’s not quite that monumentally stupid, though, so he skirts clear of any genuine feeling at the moment. “Indeed I have.”

*

 _Some time later:_

Eames knows he’s been being watched. If he couldn’t pick up on things like that, he probably wouldn’t still be alive. What’s irritating, though, as is that he can’t work out why he’s being watched, or by whom.

So he starts going to public places and looking conspicuous. He’s currently drifting around New York City, so he’s not short on places to force a confrontation. That would usually be furthest from his mind, but he’s getting jumpy and would much rather at least know what he’s running from. He dresses in his most obnoxious shirt (a hideous maroon thing that’s too tight across the shoulders), picks up a Communist newspaper, and settles himself in a popular gay café to wait.

It’s not too long before the back of his neck prickles unpleasantly. He’s hardly shocked that someone’s staring at him, but this is just flat-out uncomfortable. He glances casually at the mirrored wall next to his head. Sure enough, there’s a clean-cut, dark-haired young man looking very conspicuously _away_.

If there’s one thing Eames is good at, it’s faces, and he recognizes this one just from the jawline. He doesn’t remember what the kid’s name was, but he very clearly remembers being shot. That haircut isn’t military this time around, though, and nor is the cardigan. His shoulder twinges uncomfortably. _The old war-wound,_ he thinks, smirking. He can definitely take this kid on.

He stands up, shaking his limbs out deliberately, making sure the kid is watching. Then he strides right over and sits down across from him.

“Afternoon. Saw you come in. You here alone?”

The kid smiles tightly. “Yeah. Uh, hi.”

“Jason Schwartz,” Eames offers, chancing a really obvious lie to see if the kid will call him on it.

He frowns slightly, but that’s it. “Nice to meet you. I’m Arthur.”

 _Arthur_. Right, of course. That oddly old-fashioned name. Not offered with a last time, Eames notes. The opposite of what he does, then.

Eames knows Arthur’s been watching him, but he’s pretty sure Arthur doesn’t know he knows. In that case, he feels entirely free to flirt shamelessly until he figures out what’s going on. This is, after all, a gay café. “So,” he asks, leaning in close, “What’s your Meyers-Brigg type?”

Not even a twitch of Arthur’s mouth. “Are you serious?”

Eames smiles. “No, actually. I think I could probably work it out, given another few minutes with you.”

And then Arthur does surprise him. He leans forever, muscles loosening and smile starting. “You’re quite the flirt, Mr. Eames.”

Eames feels as though he’s been punched, although not hard. So Arthur knows who he is. That’s not really a shock, if he’s following him. But something about the way Arthur says his name rubs Eames the wrong way, and when he smiles, he can see the mirror reaction happens on Arthur’s face.

“I see you’ve found me out,” Eames says smoothly. Let Arthur think that. “So, what exactly is it that you want from me?” He wonders if Arthur remembers meeting him years ago.

Arthur sighs, sounding extremely put-upon. “We were wondering if you wanted a job.”

Eames raises his eyebrows. “We?”

Arthur stands. “Come with me.”

 _We_ , it turns out, means Arthur, a pleasant young American named Dom Cobb, and a gorgeous French woman named Mallorie Miles.

“Excuse me,” Eames says after being introduced, “But you wouldn’t happen to be related to Professor Stephen Miles?”

She lights up. “That’s right. He’s my father.”

Maybe this little team of dream-sharing children isn’t so bad after all. “He’s something of a hero of mine, actually,” Eames confesses. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Cobb go cautious and annoyed and Arthur roll his eyes. “He’s a bloody pioneer when it comes to this stuff, especially psychology.”

“Yes,” Mallorie says, “That’s what we do. We’re a little outside official jurisdiction, of course.”

“Darling,” Eames says, “That’s where I do my best work.” He doesn’t feel the need to tell her that he almost went into psychology, before he wound up balking at what his own mind always turned up.

“All right,” Arthur says, sounding slightly irritated. “That brings us to why we sought you out.” He taps a thick brief against the tabletop. They’re in what appears to be a makeshift office in what’s properly a warehouse. Appropriate, Eames thinks, for freelance dream work. He listens as Arthur explains the job, something fairly straightforward for mostly-legal psych cadets. He’s much more interested in the fact that while Arthur is explaining the job, he’s clearly not the one who’s in charge. Good to know.

“Anyway,” Arthur wraps up, “We realized we’d need a forger, and Miles said he’d heard of you.” He allows Eames a moment to glow slightly. “So we looked you up.” The corners of his mouth turn down almost comically. “Of course, in researching you, I also found out that you’re a compulsive gambler, real-world forger, and alcoholic.”

Eames realizes that Arthur has discovered one of the numerous personas he can put on and take off at will. The gambler part is certainly true in a lot of ways, but not in all of them. “You’ve missed out that I used to smuggle Somnacin across country lines back when it was still regulated.”

Arthur goes still. Then he snaps, “I know you. Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“What’s wrong?” Mallorie asks. Eames finds himself already drawn to her voice.

“I shot him,” Arthur says sharply. Eames is surprised to find that he sounds slightly chagrined. “I shot him in the shoulder. When I was in the army.”

“Not in a war,” Eames clarifies helpfully. “He kidnapped me. Roughed me up quite badly as well. I’m a little insulted that he forgot.”

“That’s our point man,” Cobb says fondly. “Always focused on the details.”

So that is how they begin.

How they continue is this:

Eames tailors himself to everyone he meets, slipping himself carefully into the blank spaces of their needs, wants, and expectations. Then he meets Arthur. Arthur is a _wall_. He’s a blank. Eames can mimic his physical mannerisms, but that’s _all_. He’s so deadly boring that Eames can’t slip into his skin. Worse, Eames keeps having the awful, creeping sensation that he’s wrong, that there’s something he’s missing under the surface.

After the job, Mallorie, with whom he’s already finding an easy camaraderie, says, “Oh, I meant to tell you about my idea. I’ve been talking with _Papa_ about some sort of physical token to remind yourself whether or not you’re dreaming. I’ve heard people can have trouble telling, sometimes.”

Eames is shaken by how incredibly young these three are. They probably haven’t heard half the horror stories that are out there, let alone seen what a bad round of Somnacin or an unstable mind can do. “No thanks, love,” he says. “I’ve never had any trouble keeping track of reality.”

He doesn’t dare lose sight of what’s real. It would be too easy not to stop.

So Eames allows himself to become somewhat entangled with Cobb, Mallorie, and Arthur. He likes them better than most young dreamers in the business, and they’re not quite criminals, which is a nice change. They don’t need his services too often, but he’s sometimes useful, and Mallorie seems to have taken a liking to him.

Arthur, on the other hand, seems to like him about as much as he did upon their first meeting. Thankfully, he doesn’t actually have a gun on him—at least most of the time, Eames has noticed—and so they keep an uneasy peace between them.

It doesn’t help at all that Eames is incredibly attracted to Arthur. He doesn’t think he has a type, except people who are shockingly bad for him, but if he did, Arthur would be it. Letting himself get to know Arthur is slightly horrifying, because he keeps catching himself falling a little further. It’s not as though this is new, though. Neither is the fact that he begins to offer honesty with ease, knowing that no one will recognize it for what it is. Eventually, the difference between truth and lies stops mattering.

The first time Eames slips up properly isn’t on a mission. Mal and Cobb are gone on their honeymoon, and Mal has kindly set Arthur up to spend time with Eames. Arthur says something vague about not approving of spending time with coworkers outside work, but he sounds distant and upset, so Eames manages to drag him out shopping.

It’s silly, and they both know it, but Arthur looks too miserable to care and Eames just wants him to stop looking like that.

By now, he’s so in love with Arthur it’s like being punched. Arthur’s wearing a cardigan—which still doesn’t suit him as well as a uniform--over a nice green button-down, and that only makes matters improbably worse.

They wander through a few shops, mostly not talking, until Eames says, “Which of them is it, then?”

Arthur frowns, holding a tie in one hand. “Sorry?”

“Which of them do you fancy? Cobb or Mallorie?” He knows, of course. He’s been paying attention for nearly a year now.

Arthur looks at him, a mix of blank and annoyed. Then he says, “I think you know. You’re good at knowing.”

 _The abyss stares back_ , Eames reminds himself mournfully. The trouble with getting to know people is that they do, occasionally, get to know you. “All right,” he says, “So talk to me about it. It might make you feel better.”

Arthur snorts and holds up a tie to his chest. “I really doubt it. Dom knows I’ve had a thing for him since I met him, and Mal—Well, she’s obviously way out of everyone’s league, except his.”

Eames privately disagrees, but he keeps his mouth shut. That’s a skill he’s had to hone around Arthur. Arthur turns to inspect the ties again and Eames is distracted by a rack of reasonably tacky earrings. This is the sort of thing he’d be all over he if he were—

Well. They’d look lovely on Mal. If he were ten years younger—five, even—he thinks he’d hate her. He runs his thumb over an especially hideous pair of earrings, gold globes shot through with red and pink and pearl, overlarge and clearly fake. They’re exactly the wrong shade to go with his shirt.

“Eames,” Arthur says sharply.

He jerks away. “Let’s go.”

Arthur follows him as they leave the story. "Don't tell me you're a cross-dresser now, Mr. Eames."

"Not full-time, love, only on missions,” Eames says with forced cheer.

There are many, many things he hates about Arthur. He hates that his guard is always down around Arthur. He hates that Arthur is so irritatingly attractive. He hates that Arthur is impossible for forge well, although Eames has been practicing. It’s not even that he doesn’t understand Arthur, although that’s still difficult. It’s just that Arthur is too subtle, his personality too subdued. The opposite of Eames, then, although Eames knows for a fact that the other forgers who’ve tried to be him have always failed miserably.

*

That evening, Eames is _drunk_. Contrary to popular assumption, he doesn't get drunk very--she doesn't get drunk very often

Because she is drunk, she is letting herself think in these terms.

She's tried a dozen first names in her head now, always when she's drunk, and none of them fit. It's not as though anyone calls her by her first name as it is, for which she is immensely thankful. Arthur does have that unfortunate little habit of calling her _Mr. Eames_ , but she'll let it slide because the alternative is confrontation.

Sometimes, she thinks she's in a very complicated dream, layers deep, a woman forging a man and forgetting that she started out as Rachel or Caroline or Missy.

Missy, she thinks, is just about the right level of tacky for the image she cultivates. The fact that she's cultivating it so purposefully, though, is what really makes her wonder. Why would she put on a bloke who can't dress himself or talk like he's got the degrees she's got for no reason?

The reason she's drunk is, as always, Arthur. He'd make a good forger if he had the training or the inclination, with the observational skills he's got. He keeps calling her out on little things. Arthur's rubbing up against the truth leaves her nerves raw.

So she's drunk. Sitting in a chair that she picked out only because it was so ugly, drunk. The bad thing about getting drunk is, she gets all sorts of brilliant ideas, her senses feeling heightened when really they're dulled. She's hasn't jerked off in two months. (Calling it that in her head doesn't make a difference one way or the other.)

So, alone in her locked flat, she strips down as much as she feels comfortable--the mustard-yellow shirt stays on, even though the lights are off. The pants that are only wool to annoy people are shoved down just enough. She slides her hand around her cock and thinks with determination about other people in other places.

 _You're a forger_ , she tells herself. _So fucking imagine it. That's what you're here for._ Thinking herself into other people's bodies has gotten her rich, so why is it always so much trouble with this?

She imagines someone touching her chest, and she means so very much for it to be a non-specific man, but she's always gotten hung up on details, so he ends up having slicked-back hair a nice suit. She imagines the swell of her chest, but she doesn't touch it, because breaking the illusion will just make her have another panic attack, and she's so hilariously bad at those. They always slot themselves over her laid-back persona like displaced exclamation marks, distorting the complete vision of who she's meant to be.

Her hand slides over her cock, and she wishes that she couldn't feel everything so acutely. Skin on skin is always difficult, because she knows just what skin it is. Fucking herself up the ass with a vibrator has proven useful--everything is numb and removed, shuddering with foreign feeling. She could almost pretend that things were right in her body, but she's not fooling herself. That's dangerous, in this business. Reality is the one thing to cling to, and she's not about to end up like anyone she’s seen lose track.

Even if she can't stop saying _she_ in her head.

Her breath hitches as she strokes herself, and a gasps escapes her lips. She's instantly furious with herself. Instead of thinking about the gorgeous man in her head feeling her up, now she's thinking about how her voice will never, ever be right or convincing.

Except in dreams, of course. She can see how people get addicted.

She's never been able to tell how much trouble Arthur has keeping track of reality. His totem is good and he doesn't talk about it much, which is probably the best anyone can hope for.

Thinking about that and not about her body, the physical sensations do their job and she comes. The smell is all wrong. She's furious that it matters.

She's not good at being furious, though, so she thinks about how it feels good and how at least she's gotten to the point where she can do this.

When she's sober, he won't think about any of this in the same way. He won't let himself.

*

It’s much later, and Eames is sitting next to Arthur on a bus. They’re both headed from the same city to the same city, and so they’re doing this awkward, almost-friends thing again. Arthur has a laptop open on his knees, typing away at something that looks, even from an angle, incredibly boring.

“Twenty questions?” Eames offers.

Arthur shoots him a horrible look and goes back to his spreadsheets or whatever they are.

Eames fidgets for a few minutes. Then he says, “All right, let’s play this: what’s the worst way you’ve ever died?”

Arthur’s face goes hard for only a second before he smooths his expression back into casual apathy. “Drowning,” he says. “What about you?”

Eames thinks about what to say, already knowing that answer. “I got shot,” he says finally. “I got shot in the stomach with time left on the clock. The others on my team were . . . elsewhere. It was a large level. I was hurt too badly to get far, and there wasn’t much around in the way of weapons. The projections had moved on.” He winces, remembering. “I bled out. It took about an hour.”

Arthur frowns slightly. “Why couldn’t you just dream up a gun?”

Eames shakes his head. “No such luck when you’re a novice at changing the dreamscape and you’re delirious from pain.”

Arthur blinks at him. Then he says, “When we get to Boston, let’s get a hotel room.”

Which makes no fucking sense, but when has Arthur ever made sense? It’s like he’s missing pieces. “One hotel room?” Eames asks carefully. “Just to clarify, are you making a move on me?” Why now, after all this time?

Arthur smiles faintly. “Is that problem? You’ve been hitting on me for years now.”

“Ah, did I finally wear you down?” It’s mostly a joke.

“Something like that.”

The hotel room is nothing special, but Eames feels all keyed up nonetheless. _It’s just Arthur_ , he tells himself, but that doesn’t help. Arthur is a fantastic kisser, against all odds. Eames wonders what Cobb and Mallorie have done now to upset him, then he realizes the last thing he should be doing right now is worrying about them.

Arthur presses him back against the mattress, loosening his own tie. “You’re a good kisser.”

Eames wonders if there’s a joke in there somewhere. Instead, he says, “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Arthur laughs, sounding happier than usual. “I could have guessed that.”

There’s definitely a joke there. Arthur’s hands are cool and smooth as they undo his shirt and ghost over his chest, but his mouth is hot.

And then, just like every time with every man, Arthur unbuckles Eames’s belt and Eames freezes.

Arthur stops immediately, his face only half visible in the light from the city outside the window. “Too fast?”

Eames could agree, could blame it on Arthur, but he’s never been good at this part. This part is where it always goes wrong. “No,” he starts, “I’ve just never . . .”

“Never what?” Arthur asks. He laughs. “Eames, you’re not going to tell me you’re a virgin. I’ve seen you seduce probably dozens of men on missions.”

Eames sets his jaw and makes himself say, “That was in dreams, love. Reality’s another matter.”

Arthur is silent for too long. Then he says softly, “Can I ask why?”

“You can ask, but you’re not likely to get the truth.” Which is honest, and more than Eames gives most people.

Arthur shifts in the dark until he’s lying by Eames’s side. “In that case, maybe we should stop. Just rest here tonight.”

If Eames hadn’t been in love with Arthur before, he would have been doomed anyway.

The next morning, Arthur’s out getting coffee before Eames can pry himself out of bed. He blinks at the ceiling for a while and then decides to call Yusuf. He doesn’t know or care what time it is there. Yusuf is always awake, anyway.

“Hello?”

“I fucked around with Arthur,” Eames says blurrily into the phone.

“So, yeah, Eames, hi,” Yusuf says. “I told you not to do that. A couple of times. He sounds like a psychopath, Eames.”

“Unfair. And not why I’m calling.” He clears his throat. “I need some advice. About sex.”

Yusuf laughs, and Eames is hit with a pang of missing him. “Sex. All right, go ahead, but I doubt I’m going to be able to solve anything you haven’t managed to.”

Eames considers just hanging up. Instead, he says, “That’s the thing. I’m not the bloody Don Juan you all seem to think. I’m sort of a virgin. I’ve only fucked in dreams.” It doesn’t really get any easier to say.

Yusuf, to his eternal credit, doesn’t laugh. He just says, “Hm. So, what’s the advice you need?”

There are good and bad ways this conversation can go, and good and bad ways it’s gone. The nicest end result has been “staying friends” and the worst, so far, was a kind offer of electroshock, worst only because it came from his parents. But this is Yusuf, Yusuf who is practical and friendly and no-nonsense. “All right,” Eames says, “It’s easier in dreams. It’s like I told you. I’ve mostly forge women on missions. I—I usually forge women, period. There’s a reason I love being a forger. I—” Eames doesn’t have a straightforward bone in his body, and he can’t go on. This is too important for honesty.

“Oh,” Yusuf says carefully. Then he says, “No, that’s fine. I mean, of course. I’m behind you all the way, mate. Whatever makes you feel—Not that you do, clearly, because . . . But I’m on your side.”

Eames feels his heart sink. _Yeah, thanks, mate._ The important thing is, though, that Yusuf _is_ on his side, whether or not he’s good at it. “Thanks,” he says dismally. “So, any advice on having sex with people who may or may not be Arthur?”

“Eames, my man,” Yusuf says sternly, “Do _not_ have sex with Arthur.”

*

Around the time James is born, Eames sees Arthur again. Mal is out of the picture because she’s pregnant, so they need an extra hand on a job. Beforehand, Eames invites Arthur out for coffee, just wanting to see how things stand, hopefully without actually talking about it.

When Arthur shows up at the coffee shop, though, Eames is surprised at how different he is. He greets Eames with a smile, and his entire body is held more loosely. He seems _relaxed_.

“What the hell happened to you?” Eames says by way of greeting.

Arthur’s accustomed blank disdain reappears. “I almost forgot how distasteful you are. What do you mean what _happened_ to me?”

“Never mind,” Eames says, “I’ve figured it out. I’ll tell you in a minute if I’m right. I’ll get the coffees, shall I?”

Arthur sighs. “You do that.”

He gets Arthur’s coffee black and his own with three sugars, although he usually only takes two. He wants to add the extra one in front of Arthur to feel his look of disgust.

“So, forgery,” Eames says, planting his elbows on the table once he’s acquired coffee. Even his posture is in direct contrast to Arthur’s. “Here’s how it works, for starters. You observe people. You see how they hold themselves, what their nervous tics are. You learn them inside and out. The best forgers understand the way a person’s mind works, so they can imagine themselves right into that skin.”

Arthur sighs. “What’s the point of all this?”

“I’ve been forging you,” Eames states, pleased with how sour Arthur’s expression goes. “Just for fun, to see if I could. You’re tricky, but I’ve mostly got you down. Except you’ve shifted now, quite a bit. You’re happier. You’re letting yourself relax.”

Instead of arguing, Arthur tucks a little smile away at the corner of his mouth. “Go on.”

“You’re with them. Mallorie and Cobb. Or, uh, Mal and Dom, to you.” He slides easily into Arthur’s accent.

Arthur actually goes a little pink and studies his coffee intently. “That’s not true.”

Eames tips back in his chair, almost sending it off balance, his third sugar packet forgotten on the tabletop. “That’s another thing about you. You’re one of the worst liars I’ve ever met. Leave it to the professionals, darling.”

“Fine,” Arthur snaps, “But I don’t want to discuss it.” He pauses. “Am I really that bad a liar?”

“We can’t all be perfect,” Eames says absurdly. He can feel his chair about to fall over.

Arthur makes patterns in the sugar with the end of his spoon for a moment. Then he says, “Oh yeah? You’re perfect?”

Eames feels cold.

“Because,” Arthur continues, “If I’m not mistaken, you’re dyslexic. How the hell do you do real-world forgery, anyway? I mean, a dyslexic forger? Isn’t that a little improbable?”

Eames shakes his head, weak with relief, and puts his chair down. “No. In fact, it’s the only way to be really good at it.”

“Shut up,” Arthur sighs. “I don’t want to hear whatever convoluted explanation you have. You know, I’ve done research on you. Or rather, I did, back when we were first working with you. I sort of put it aside once I realized that none of it was probably real. You’ve got a couple of degrees. Are those real?”

“One of them,” Eames says truthfully. “What else did you find out, exactly?”

Arthur frowns. “Mostly a lot of things that aren’t true. I keep being surprised by you.”

 _Well, yes_ , Eames thinks.

Arthur sips his coffee and looks at Eames. “For example, I realized you don’t drink. I’m guessing you’re a reformed alcoholic, but guessing is your territory.”

Mostly wrong. It runs in his family, so after a few months in London, he just stopped.

“You’re always on time.”

Well. True. Except when he means to be late.

“And—” Arthur looks a little embarrassed. “I feel bad saying that it came as a surprise, but you’re very intelligent.”

Eames laughs. “Ah yes, my hidden mind. Thanks for that. Well, we’ve established that you’re getting to know me after all this time.”

Arthur smiles. Then Eames’s phone goes off.

“Hang on a tick,” he says. He flips it open before checking to see who it is, which is always a mistake. “Hello?”

“Edward? It’s your father.”

Eames can’t feel the phone under his hand for a second. Then his very useful survival instinct takes over and he says cheerfully, “Oh, lovely to hear from you. What is it?”

“Your mother needs you to put in an appearance at Christmas this year. It won’t look good if you’re absent again. Do you think you can manage that?”

Eames does _not_. “Absolutely. I’ll be there. Let mum know, will you? Ta.” He hangs up before his father can say anything else. He’s not going within a hundred miles of that place if he can help it.

Arthur gives him a questioning look.

“Nothing important,” he says, feeling the lie fall flat for once.

*

“I’m fucking sick of it.”

Eames has been waiting for Nash to say that for five months, only a month longer than they’ve been dating. “Sick of it,” he echoes. “Right, well, that’s odd. I’ve never known a man to turn down a blowjob.” That’s not true.

Nash pushes Eames back against the couch cushions. “No, hey, you’re not getting off the hook that easy. We need to talk about this. It’s been five months.”

 _Six_ , Eames thinks.

“Five months,” Nash continues, “of you doing stuff for me and doing stuff in dreams and not fucking letting me touch you in reality. What the hell, Eames? It’s weird.”

Eames has had this conversation before. He’s had it a lot of times. The way it ends depends on what he decides to say. The room goes a little bright and slow around him as he thinks about how this is going to go, who Nash is, how he’s likely to react. Eames can read people as easily as breathing, but hope always fucks him up. “Yeah,” he says finally, licking his lips, “We should probably talk about that.”

Nash crosses his arms, which he only does when he’s nervous. “Yeah. Great. So talk.”

Eames thinks they could probably have a battle to the death over who has worse self-esteem. Arthur can join in, but only when he’s hanging around Cobb and Mal.

There are a few ways he tells people this story. There’s the way that involves the flat truth, and there’s the way that involves all the embarrassing bits in between. He’s been with Nash for half a year, so he might as well get it all out there. “I usually fuck in dreams,” he says. Start simple. Start less _bizarre_. (Start half-honest.)

Nash runs a hand through his hair. “Uh, yeah, I _noticed_ that. Why?”

Eames feels the lurch of panic he should be well done with by now. “Look, well, to be perfectly honest, I’ve _only_ ever . . . in dreams.”

He watches Nash’s face change. People face’s usually go through a certain set of emotions, but not always in the same order: confusion-pity-disgust, pity-disgust-pity, confusion-disgust-pity.

Nash’s goes from confusion to pity and stops there. Eames feels himself go lightheaded with fucking, fucking hope.

“Eames . . . why?” Nash’s voice is soft. Careful. _Ohgodplease_.

“I can’t.” It’s not the end of the sentence, but the words get caught in her throat. She scrubs a hand over her face, thinking against her will of the disparity between the size of her hands in reality and in dreams, the width of her shoulders, the shape of her face.

“Were you . . . Did someone hurt you?” Nash’s face has gone stormy.

“No!” She’s quick to dismiss this question before she becomes a coward and lets him think that, something she’s allowed to happen only once. “No, nothing like that. It’s just me. I’m wrong.” She mentally smacks herself. Possibly not the most useful beginning. Her head is spinning with where this goes from here: _I’m not comfortable with—I feel more like—I’ve always—I want—I am—_

“Wrong how?” Nash asks, nothing but concerned.

Eames swallows, the litany of _please_ speeding up. “Wrong like—like not particularly comfortable with my body.” But God, fuck, going at it from the most roundabout angle just drags out the pain, so she says in a rush, “I’m more comfortable in dreams—being women.”

Nash is silent, possibly the fucking worst part. Then he says, as so many people have before, “What are you saying, exactly?”

And now she just wishes he’d leave right now and save her the anxiety of whatever’s coming next. “I’d prefer to be a woman,” she says stiffly, trying to maintain whatever pride she has left. “So it’s a trifle difficult doing some things outside of dreams, although I’m—I’m willing to discuss it, you know, and work through it and whatnot.” She’s still talking because when she stops, Nash will start, and she’s fucking _scared_.

“Jesus,” Nash says. He pushes his hand through his hair again, and Eames thinks about how she’s probably never going to get to touch him again. “That’s—That’s kind of a sucker-punch.”

“Yeah,” Eames says. “Well.”

“You should have told me.” Now Nash sounds accusing. This is when it gets bad, every time.

“Mate,” Eames says with a shaky laugh, “I can barely tell _myself_.”

Nash echoes her laugh, but there’s an edge to it. He rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, but—Jesus, Eames. That’s a little fucked-up.”

Eames wants to say that she _knows_ that, but there are a million layers between what she thinks and what she says on a good day, and this day is fast proving itself to be far from good.

“I mean,” Nash continues, “You seriously should have said something. Are you—Are you going to, you know, get fucking surgery and shit? Do you wear—”

“I do _not_ wear dresses and lacey underthings, if that’s what you want to know,” Eames snaps. She fucking hates dresses, she’s always fucking hated dresses, and she feels like she’s going to pass out. Can’t this just be _done?_

Nash snorts, sounding annoyed out. “Yeah, okay, whatever, Eames. You don’t get to be fucking snide about this. You didn’t tell me this huge thing, and now you’re springing it on me when I’ve already _touched_ you—I’ve already _fucked_ you—”

And oh, this is much worse than she honestly expected.

“I’m not saying it’s—it’s just _weird_. I just don’t see it.” Nash stands up. “Look, Eames, I have to go. I need to—” He makes for the door.

Because she is a fucking stupid hopeless idiot, she grabs his arm. “Nash, wait—”

He shoves her, hard, and she trips on the coffee table and smacks her head on the wall. No one’s fault but her own.

Nash looks at her for a second, opens his mouth as if to say something, then walks out the door.

If it ended there, it wouldn’t be so bad. It doesn’t.

Nash calls two hours later, when Eames has stopped crying and resorted to watching _Coupling_ on DVD.

“I thought about it,” he says when Eames answers the phone.

He’s fucking got to look at the phone before he picks up. “Yeah?” he says. “And?” He wonders if he’ll take Nash back after an apology. Surely he’s not that pathetic? _Not for anyone but Arthur_ , a treacherous part of his brain tells him.

“I overreacted,” Nash says. “I feel like a dick, I guess. I mean, you kind of sprung it on me, but . . . You know.”

Eames is tempted to say that she doesn’t know, that no one’s ever called to _apologize_ , but she just says, “Sure.”

“If you think about it, it’s actually kind of hot.”

Eames feels her hand go somewhat numb on the phone. That’s not. That’s not right. “What?” she says.

Nash clears his throat, and the phone crackles. “It’s hot. You now, in a dream, I’ll bet you could—I mean you’re a fucking forger, you could have both parts.”

On the television, Jeff is talking about buckets of ears. Eames is dimly aware of this over the roaring in her ears. “I could,” she says. Her voice comes out rough and choked. “But I’m not going to. This isn’t a game, Nash. It’s not—it’s not _sexy_ to me.”

There’s a slight pause on the other end of the line. Then Nash says, “Well, it’s sexy to me. I’d rather fuck you that way.”

Eames can’t breathe. “I don’t know what you’re bloody saying. Just stop it.”

Nash laughs, sounding a little desperate. “Well, you might as well take what you can get, Eames. I knew there was something wrong with you. Nobody has that many issues in bed. But if we can play around with this stuff, I’ll come back.”

She feels briefly proud of the fact that she doesn’t for a second consider taking him up on it. She feels less proud that she’s crying. “Not a fucking chance.”

There’s another silence. Then Nash says, “You’re sick. You know that, Eames?”

She’s furious at how hard her voice is shaking. “ _You’re_ sick, Nash. You’re a fucking bastard, and don’t ever fucking call me again.” She bites her tongue just before saying, _Arthur would never do this to me._ After all, she doesn’t know that. Then she throws the phone against the wall.

Her hands don’t stop shaking for thirty minutes.

 **Part Two**

After he suggests to them that they’re dreaming too much, Arthur doesn’t hear from Cobb and Mal for close to a month. By the middle of the fourth week, Arthur feels like he’s going crazy. He’s run out of clothing stores, casinos, and art shows to go to, and they haven't called. He wonders if the kids miss him.

He also wonders if Eames is okay.

Finally, he can’t stand worrying anymore, so he gets in his car and drives, trying to decide if he’d rather go home or to see Eames. Then he remembers that Eames is out of the country, and he turns down the street toward Cobb and Mal’s house. There’s still a large part of him that thinks of it as _Cobb and Mal’s house_ , rather than as _home_. After all, why else would he be keeping the apartment?

When he knocks, it takes Cobb nearly two minutes to open the door. He looks exhausted and unhappy. Arthur carefully considers hugging him, but he’s not sure it would be welcome. “Dom?” he asks, familiarity slipping from his lips along with the worry. “What is it?”

Cobb’s voice sounds strained. “It’s Mal. She’s not well.”

There is something wrong in Cobb’s eyes, in the set of his shoulders, in the corners of his mouth, but Arthur can’t place it. He feels furious and lost, wishing desperately that Eames were here to interpret Cobb’s body for him. He’s never been good at reading normal body language, let alone the subtle, awful, little things.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

Cobb clears his throat. “We had some trouble with—with a dream. She’s having . . . trouble. Trouble remembering that this . . . That this isn’t. Arthur, could you come back later?”

Something tiny inside Arthur wants to shout, wants to say, _Mal is my wife_ , that he wants to help, that he’s not just a family friend, that the kids need someone who—But he just shoves all of that down and says evenly, “Yeah, of course, anything you need.”

Cobb lets him come back a week later, and Arthur can see for himself that there’s something wrong, and not only with Mal. She walks through the house like she can’t see anything, but Cobb walks around like all he can see is her. Arthur feels like he’s disappearing into the woodwork, slipping between the two of them in whatever desperate war they’re engaged in.

“You’re not real,” Mal tells him on the first evening. She sounds almost pleasant about it. “You’re just one of Dom’s projections.”

Arthur feels himself go cold. “Mal, no. No, hey, have you looked at your totem?”

She laughs, a wild sound that rings hollow now. “My totem is broken, _mon petit puce_.”

Arthur’s skin crawls.

James and Phillipa seem all right, and Arthur didn’t realize until he saw them how worried he was. They hug him and tell him how glad they are that daddy’s back, though, and his worry subsides slightly.

It comes back when Mal looks at them and shakes her head. “They’re not real, either,” she says.

That night, he doesn’t even need to ask if he should sleep on the sofa. Cobb has barely touched him all day, and he feels as though he’s being punished for something he hasn’t done.

Arthur tries asking Cobb what happened. “We can get her help,” he insists.

Cobb just looks at her, almost like he can’t see Arthur. “We got lost down there,” is all he’ll say. “Maybe we can take her to a therapist.”

*

The therapist doesn’t help. After months of watching Cobb virtually _ignore_ the problem, Arthur is frustrated almost to tears, and what is meant to be a short drive ends up as a return to his apartment. He stays the night, feeling ill and furious when Cobb doesn’t call.

The next day is their anniversary. Arthur is never sure whether or not to feel like he’s intruding on this day, and he usually stays home when they go to their hotel. He’s come with them once or twice, but this year everything is so painful and strained that he’d rather lie low.

He spends the day at home, trying desperately to focus reading, cleaning, anything. Nothing works.

It’s another two weeks before he sees Cobb again. He gets a text message that simply gives an address and a city. It’s in France.

Arthur doesn’t ask questions.

*

The hotel Cobb is staying at is quiet, nearly deserted. When Arthur knocks on the door Cobb texted him the number of, he almost doesn’t expect anyone to answer, but Cobb pulls the door open after a moment.

He looks terrible. His eyes are red-rimmed and he’s far too pale. He’s not wearing his watch.

“Arthur.”

Arthur just waits, numb with fear of whatever Cobb has to say.

“She’s dead,” Cobb says. He sounds completely wrecked. “Mal’s dead.”

Arthur doesn’t even think. He just wraps his arms around Cobb and holds on. In the space between those two words, he feels everything he had with Mal slip away until the huge, expanding grief is only Cobb’s. She was his wife, after all, Arthur tells himself as he doesn’t cry.

He doesn’t ask Cobb what happened for three days. Cobb doesn’t tell him. He just says, “We have to keep moving.”

Cobb says _jump_ , Arthur preemptively tries to guess how high Cobb would prefer.

It’s a few days before Arthur thinks about the fact that nobody has tried to contact him about Mal. Of course nobody would have thought to.

He doesn’t even ask Cobb about the kids. He doesn’t _dare_.

After a week, Cobb says to him, “They think I killed her.”

Arthur doesn’t ask if he did, and Cobb gives him a little nod of thanks.

 _Don’t thank me,_ Arthur thinks. _I don’t know what I believe._ But it doesn’t matter.

Arthur mostly doesn’t leave Cobb’s side after that. They have to split up, sometimes, to avoid being caught, and he sometimes drives three hours in the middle of the night to end up at Cobb’s hotels just so he can sleep on the floor and make sure Cobb’s all right. Cobb never touches him, not even on the arm.

They work all kinds of jobs, the kind Cobb would never work before and Arthur always wanted to try. There’s so much money coming through now that Arthur could afford to live a lot better than he does, but most of it goes to lawyers and to the kids. Cobb’s actually _fighting_ this thing, legal and above-board.

When they dream, Cobb uses Mal’s top as his totem, instead of his watch. Another thing Arthur doesn’t ask about.

The jobs go well, usually, until Mal starts showing up. Arthur sees her once or twice in passing and writes it off as probably pretty normal, Cobb’s mind rebelling and spitting out images that shouldn’t be there.

She gets closer and closer, though. Then, on a routine job, she shoots Arthur in the face.

That’s all right. He’s always been willing to step in front of bullets for Cobb, and if they’re Mal’s bullets now, it doesn’t matter.

“You okay?” Cobb asks when he wakes.

“Yeah,” Arthur says. “That had better not happen again, Cobb.”

Cobb doesn’t say anything.

Arthur finally calls Eames, just to have someone to talk to.

“Yeah?”

Arthur tries to ignore the huge wash of relief. “It’s me. Arthur.”

“I know,” Eames says, his voice light, but careful. “It says on my phone, actually.”

Arthur pauses, trying to figure out how to say what he wants to say. He settles on, “Something happened. Mal’s dead.”

There’s silence for a second. Then Eames says, “Oh, Christ. I’m so sorry, Arthur. D’you want me to come?”

 _Yes_ , but that’s not what Cobb needs right now, and Arthur needs to look after Cobb. “No. It’s fine. It was a while ago. I just thought you should know.” This isn’t going at all how he planned.

Even over the phone, though, Eames is somehow impossibly good at deducing things Arthur hasn’t even thought. “Yeah, all right. But listen, don’t run yourself ragged for Cobb.”

Arthur doesn’t know how to explain, without sounding pathetic, that he’d throw himself in front of a train for Cobb. “I wasn’t, but thanks. I have to go.” He’s afraid if he stays on the line, he’ll start crying.

“Wait—” Eames says, but Arthur’s bad at listening when Eames says things like that.

*

They burn through architects like paper, losing one after practically every job. That’s how they wind up finding Nash in Spain. He’s desperate for work, and they don’t question that too hard. They’ve worked with him once or twice when he was hanging around with Eames, and all Cobb wants from him is a simple design.

All Arthur wants from him is this:

They’re currently in a deserted train station bathroom in a city Arthur can’t remember the name of, and Nash is sucking Arthur off, letting Arthur fuck his mouth like that’s what he’s _for_. For the first time since he last saw Eames, Arthur relaxes.

An hour later, Nash fucks up the job and Arthur laughs at him, humorless and cold.

Later still, they end up slightly drunk in Nash’s hotel room. Arthur accepted his offer to “come hang out” only because Cobb turned in early and Arthur’s too shot with adrenaline to sleep just yet.

Nash looks unnaturally pale in the shitty hotel light, and Arthur can’t think why they decided to work with him. It’s not like he’s ever been good for anything before.

“So, uh, it’s been a while,” Nash says, sitting on the edge of the bed and fiddling with the thin blanket. They skipped the catching up before the job, after all.

“Yeah,” Arthur says. “Have you moved up in the world at all?” He can’t help being vicious to Nash. It’s the first thing in months that’s felt good.

“Suck my dick, asshole,” Nash returns, swallowing hard.

“You’re so low-class,” Arthur sighs. Not that he’s ever been high class, but at least he has the good sense to fake it.

Nash lies back on the bed, twisting his shirt in his hands, clearly the only human in the world who doesn’t relax when he drinks. “Hey. I’m sorry about what happened. With Cobb’s—With Mal.”

“You don’t need to comment on it,” Arthur snaps. He’s not going to break in front of Nash, of all people.

Nash flinches like he’s been struck. He doesn’t answer, though. He just keeps winding his t-shirt between his hands.

And fuck, it’s driving Arthur crazy. “Why are you such a slob?” he asks coolly.

Nash bites his lip hard enough to make it go white for a second. “I’m not—I wish you wouldn't say that shit all the time.”

Arthur shrugs, feeling like he’s missing something. He looks around the hotel room, thinking how hideous the crookedly-hung paintings are. “This place is so disgusting.”

“I kind of like it,” Nash mutters. Nearly everything he says sounds like an apology, and it gets under Arthur’s skin in a different way than anyone else he knows.

“You would,” Arthur says.

Nash chews his lip harder. “Yeah. I would.”

And then Arthur gets it. He’s generally stupidly slow when it comes to reading people, but he and Nash are distressingly similar. He gets up and sits next to Nash on his bed. “You’re useless. Worthless.” He hits the back of Nash’s head unnecessarily hard, his heart beating in his throat.

“Fuck!” Nash hisses. “Jesus! You’re such a shit. I hate you.”

“I don’t hate you,” Arthur says calmly. “You’re not worth that. You’re nothing.”

Nash makes a little sound in the back of his throat, and Arthur can’t deal with looking at him anymore. He grabs Nash’s jaw and kisses him hard, digging his fingers in.

Nash kisses back, biting Arthur’s lip. “God,” he gasps, “You’re filthy.”

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you,” Arthur says breathlessly, palming the side of Nash’s neck roughly. He wants to dig his fingers in there, too, but he doesn’t dare yet.

Nash groans and lets Arthur kiss him. “I, shut up.”

Arthur ducks his head, done with kissing, and bites the curve of Nash’s throat. Nash’s fingers find his hips, dragging him closer.

“God, you’re good. You’re so good, Arthur.”

Arthur thinks he sounds ridiculous, and he suddenly realizes that he’s free to say so. It’s both freeing and worrying. “You’re absurd,” he mutters into Nash’s skin. “You’re disgusting.”

Afterwards, Arthur goes to Cobb’s room to let him know that Nash will work with them again.

*

On their third job with Nash, they take a train into Nice. Trains make Cobb twitchy, so he reads over Arthur’s mission data again and again in their compartment while Arthur excuses himself and goes to an empty compartment. _Five minutes_ , he mouths to Nash.

Arthur’s been waiting exactly six minutes when Nash arrives. “You’re late,” Arthur says pointedly, not looking up from his watch.

Nash laughs that desperate little laugh of his. He looks even more strung out than he did six minutes ago. “I’m seriously going to fucking kill you.”

Arthur lets his mouth curve in a cruel smile. Half the fun is winding Nash up. “Are you?” he asks, letting himself sound bored. “Better get on that.”

He’s still looking away, so it’s nearly a shock when Nash shoves him. His head bounces off the wall and he shuts his eyes for a second, giving Nash a chance to hit him.

Nash doesn’t.

Arthur opens his eyes and huffs out a laugh. “You need to work out.” Something in his gut twists whenever he talks shit to Nash.

Nash’s breath catches in his throat, something other than shock. Arthur says things like this to him all the time, so maybe it’s just anger stopping him from getting enough air. “Shut up, you son of a bitch,” he grits out. Then he hits Arthur across the face, open-palmed.

Arthur winches and gives Nash a hard shove.

“ _Fuck_ you, Arthur,” Nash spits, grabbing Arthur’s wrists. “You’re a fucking monster.”

“Oh, grow up,” Arthur sneers. “Let go of me.” He twists his wrist a little, not hard enough to get Nash off him, but enough to make it look like he’s trying. There’s a very delicate balance to this game, and Arthur _needs_ this to go well. He can’t go back to Cobb and the awful weight of his pain without—

Pain. Nash’s hand slams against Arthur’s throat, punching the breath out of him and pinning him to the wall. Arthur gasps, chokes, but Nash’s hand is still there. He grabs Nash’s arm, digging his nails in, but not hard enough to stop him. _Oh, God_ , he thinks uselessly. Why does Nash always know exactly what he needs?

Arthur leans back against the wall, tilting his head to expose his throat to Nash, who keeps up the rough, uneven pressure. He looks oddly focused, watching Arthur’s face for something that probably isn’t there.

Arthur coughs hard, looking for air that isn’t there, and Nash seems to take that as a sign to shove his knee between Arthur’s legs, spreading them wide against the wall. Arthur grinds against Nash’s knee shamelessly, fighting for air and friction.

This is the first time in weeks that he hasn’t had to worry about anything.

His eyes flutter closed and he stops fighting, just letting Nash squeeze him breathless and rub his cock through his pants.

“Fucking asshole,” Nash mutters under his breath, digging his nails into the side of Arthur’s neck.

Then suddenly the pinpricks of dizziness in Arthur’s head spread and spin, and he’s panicking against his will. He shoves Nash as hard as he can, coughing violently when Nash backs off.

“I, I can’t fucking breathe. Oh, God,” Arthur chokes out.

Nash has gone pale. “Whoa, hey, easy. Sorry. Too much. My bad. Sorry.”

The jumbled heap of apologies just makes Arthur want him more. “No, do it again.” He won’t lose control next time.

Nash gives him a look, tilting his head to one side and watching Arthur’s face. Arthur has no idea of what his own expression looks like. Finally, Nash says, “Okay” and shoves Arthur against the wall again, gripping his throat and squeezing him through his pants.

This time, Arthur’s cough is half moan. He sounds broken open, but he doesn’t care. This isn’t on him.

Nash leans in close, pressing on Arthur’s throat and nipping his ear. All of Arthur’s nerve endings feel suddenly as though they’re centered on the wet heat of Nash’s mouth, everything narrowing to that one point.

“Shit,” Arthur gasps. The sound is nothing but breath escaping.

“You like that, you fucker?” Nash demands. He sounds scared, and Arthur grinds against him harder. Nash kisses him, biting his bottom lip bloody and driving his tongue deep into Arthur’s mouth. Arthur just opens his mouth and lets Nash, feeling the pressure increase and decrease on his throat.

Nash’s body is flush against Arthur’s now, pinning him to the wall. He lets go of Arthur’s throat to cover his nose with one hand, still kissing him. Arthur nearly panics again, but he forces himself to grab Nash’s hips instead, letting Nash cut off his air. When Nash finally pulls away, Arthur makes a horrible, raw sound in the back of his throat.

“We,” he gasps, “We need to get back soon.”

“Then you’d better hurry up.” Without warning, Nash strikes him across the face.

Arthur’s body shudders against Nash’s, the unexpected pain jolting him over the edge. When Nash pulls away, Arthur stumbles aback against the wall, gasping. “Fuck. We should have gone somewhere more private.” He can feel himself coming back together as he pulls back into himself, cataloguing every injury and how long they’ve been here and—

Nash interrupts his thought process. “You’re going to have bruises.”

Arthur touches his throat. He hadn’t thought about that. “Shit. I am? Am I bruising?”

“Well, yeah,” Nash says testily, not quite looking at Arthur. “Are you going to do something for me, or what?”

Arthur looks at him blankly. Then he says, “No. I’ve got to get back to Cobb.”

Nash is silent for a second. “Fine. Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t even . . . It wasn’t even that hot. Let’s go.”

Arthur feels his throat again, panicky. He doesn’t want Cobb to see this. That would be bad. “How bad does it look? You shouldn’t have done that.” And fuck, _fuck_ , he’s going to need different pants. He wasn’t _thinking_. This is bad.

Nash just says, “It looks like shit.”

Arthur slaps the wall, a jolt of dull pain shooting through his hand and arm. “Fuck! We’re about to do a job. I can’t look like this now.”

Nash shoves his hands in his pockets, still not really looking at Arthur. Arthur can tell that he’s still hard in his too-tight jeans. “What does it matter? Just put some fucking makeup on it.”

“Oh, good idea, Nash,” Arthur snarls. “I’ll just put on my handy concealer. Fuck!” He realizes he’s being horrible, but he can’t stop. It’s always like that with Nash.

“Then you shouldn’t have let me choke you!” Nash snaps. “You’ve got less forethought than any point man has a right to.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Arthur snaps right back. “Don’t talk to me about job qualifications. I don’t want your opinion. I just want you to do your job and get me off when I need it, all right?” He can’t afford to have Nash mistake this for anything other than what it is.

Nash just stares at him for a second. “I’m not taking another job with you,” he says shakily. “Ever.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Arthur spits. “We don’t need a substandard architect.”

*

They’re both wrong. Arthur and Cobb are running out of architects who’ll work with them, and finding new ones is exhausting. It’s been weeks and Cobb looks like he hasn’t slept in about as long. They’ve kept a potential job dangling for two days now while they look for an architect, but it isn’t working.

Right now they’re sitting in a rented car in a rainstorm, eating takeout Chinese from cartons. The entire situation disgusts Arthur, but in a somewhat far-off, numb way. “I could build,” he suggests.

Cobb spears a piece of chicken viciously with one chopstick. “You know that’s a terrible idea. You’re good at what you do, but you can’t build. We’ve tried half a dozen times.”

Arthur is continually frustrated by his inability to do what Cobb does, but he doesn’t say anything. This isn’t about his petty insecurities. This is about making sure Cobb gets the money he needs for lawyers so he can get back to their—to his kids.

Arthur eats his lo mein and doesn’t think about anything.

Then Cobb says, “What about Nash? He didn’t do a terrible job.”

A thousand objections rise to Arthur’s lips, and he manages to pick out the least personal. “He’s sloppy.”

Cobb stares at the window at the rain and shakes his head. “He’s the only one I know of who hasn’t either refused to work with us again or been preemptively warned against us. And fuck, Arthur, I can’t go to Miles for help. Not right now. He’s having a tough enough time as it is.”

“For God’s sake, Cobb,” Arthur snaps. “You can’t keep putting other people ahead of you.”

Cobb actually focuses on him for once, at least enough to give him a very pointed look.

 _Fuck_. Arthur’s hands tighten convulsively around the flimsy carton. “I—Anyway.” He casts about for something, anything, to avoid talking to Cobb about—this. “Nash actually did mention that he wouldn’t work with me again.”

Cobb raises his eyebrows. “With you, specifically? Not us?”

Arthur wants to say that while Cobb’s mind is violent, _all_ of him is violent. Not a lot of people want to work with a blunt instrument. (He doesn’t remember which of their brief architects called him that, or why.) “We had some differences of opinion,” he says carefully. He doesn’t see the point in upsetting Cobb.

Cobb nods, lost in his head again. He didn’t say anything about the bruises last time, if he even noticed. “I’ll give him a call anyway,” he says.

Arthur can’t tell Cobb why he’d rather not work with Nash, partly because he can’t quite articulate it to himself. He at least wishes he could look at Nash without thinking, _God, that could be me in a couple of years_.

It turns out Nash is just as desperate for work as they are, at least that’s what Arthur assumes, because he can’t see any other reason why he’d agree to take another job with them.

This job is standard, according to the brief Arthur writes up. Standard is nearly a joke by now, though, with Cobb’s mind so jittery. In the last two months, Cobb’s projections have killed him three times with no provocation.

Arthur doesn’t really mind. What he minds is that he keeps seeing Mal out of the corners of his eyes even when she doesn’t make a grand entrance, and he wonders if that’s a glitch of Cobb’s mind, or of his.

Arthur tosses the brief down on Nash’s draft in the little warehouse they’re currently holed up in. “Read it,” he says shortly. “The entire thing, this time, please.”

Nash just looks up at him, resentful and silent.

Arthur feels that twist in his stomach again, the one that promises he’ll be hitting Nash before the mission is over. Or the other way around. Or anything.

Except that the mission goes farther off course than even Arthur anticipated. They’re in the mind of a Mr. Cale, a businessman embezzling from his boss, poised to open the deposit box with his secrets in it, when she appears.

“Mal,” Arthur says. Cobb is the on the floor below, distracting the guards. Thank God.

“What the hell?” Nash hisses beside him.

“Hello, my love,” Mal says almost wistfully. Arthur can see something wrong twisting and glinting in her eyes, though.

“Mal, you can’t be there,” Arthur says uselessly. She’s not armed this time, as far as he can tell. Good. He’s not in the mood for pain right now. (Not from her.)

“Did you miss me?” she asks, her voice flat as it always is in Cobb’s dreams. Arthur finds himself wondering for the hundredth time what the hell she was like in those last months that makes Cobb dream her like this every time.

“No,” Arthur says shortly. “Go away. We have a job to do. Nash, open the box.”

Nash does, his hands faltering as he tries to keep looking at Mal. He looks terrified.

Mal shrugs elegantly in her gorgeous green ball gown and raises a gun from nowhere. Arthur’s breath catches.

“Don’t,” he says.

She walks forward, silent and deliberate, until she’s standing right in front of him. Arthur knows he could conjure up a gun and try to get off the first shot, but she’s always been far too fast for him, and they need to get the damn information. Nash is frozen, the box half open under his shaking hands.

“Mal,” Arthur says softly.

She brings the gun up and runs it along the line of Arthur’s jaw, the cold metal just barely brushing against his stubble. “Why are you still following Dom around like a lost puppy?” she whispers. “Why don’t you leave him?”

Arthur feels sick. This is what Cobb’s mind is thinking, then. “Why would I leave him?” His voice cracks, and he’s furious with himself.

She smiles. “He’s not getting any better, _mon petit chou_.” It’s the only French Cobb ever picked up. “He’s getting worse. If you don’t leave him now . . .” She traces Arthur lips with the gun.

He fights the urge to just open his mouth and take the gun into it, to feel the split-second kick as he’s knocked back into reality, but he forces himself to stay still. Nash is easing the papers from the deposit box while Mal is distracted.

She pushes the barrel of the gun against his lips. Her other hand has wandered idly to his hip, and that, also, is nothing new in these dreams. “If you don’t leave him now, you’re going to get hurt. He breeds disaster and death.”

Arthur wants to scream, wants to say, _No, that’s me_ , but he doesn’t. He just sets his jaw and closes his lips tightly against the cold metal.

Mal smiles and cocks the gun. Nash has the papers.

Then something different happens. “Put it down, love.”

Arthur is startled into movement, jerking away from Mal as she turns to face the intruder. He realizes he’s shaking.

“Who’s that?” Nash asks.

Arthur blinks, refocusing. The woman behind Mal is pointing a gun at her, hip cocked to one side in her hideous paisley dress.

“Eames,” Arthur says, almost before he realizes, almost like a reflex.

The woman smiles at Arthur over Mal’s shoulder. “No, darling, you. But you’re welcome, anyhow.”

 _Fuck_. The last thing they need is Arthur bringing in projections, too. “But why—”

But Mal and Eames have both started shooting at once, and both of them hit their targets. Mal goes down, making a small, desperate sound as she falls. Arthur tries not to feel anything about that.

Eames sags to his knees, bleeding all over his dress. “Fucking hell,” he says woefully.

Arthur can’t stop shaking. “Eames,” he says, unable to say anything else.

Eames looks at him. The blood clashes horribly with the pattern of the dress, but nearly anything would. Her—his eyes flutter shut and he winces. “Fuck, I’m. I.” He coughs. “I miss you.”

“Why?” Arthur asks, mesmerized. Mal is motionless at his feet. Nash, beside him, is trembling.

Eames opens his eyes and looks at Arthur. “You know me.”

And in that moment, Arthur does. All of her.

When they wake up, Arthur is still shaking. They’re in a hotel room in England. Cobb is on one side of him and Nash is on the other. He can’t stop touching his die.

Cobb immediately stands and goes to check his top, but he’s been doing that every time they wake up these days. Arthur remembers Cobb and Mal saying that you should never touch another person’s totem, and he thinks about the top, and about Cobb’s watch.

“What happened in there?” Cobb asks, pocketing the top after he’s satisfied himself that this is real. “You two look terrible. We should get out before the mark wakes up.”

“Yeah,” Arthur says tightly. His hands won’t stop trembling. Cobb doesn’t really want an answer; he’s just running on autopilot.

They get the hell out. Their own rooms are down the hall. Arthur is sharing one with Cobb, but he hesitates outside the door after Cobb goes in.

“Hey,” Nash says almost gently. He looks about as bad as Arthur feels. “Come to my room.”

If there’s one thing Arthur can still do, it’s take orders. He follows Nash.

Nash locks the door behind them, grabbing Arthur’s shoulders almost immediately. “You okay?” he asks, pressing against Arthur.

Arthur inclines his head slightly, torn between shoving Nash as hard as he can and clinging to his jacket. He settles for just letting Nash feel how badly he’s shaking. He can’t stop thinking about the blood on Mal’s dress, the blood on Eames’s dress. “Fuck,” he whispers.

“Easy,” Nash says, but he sounds awful. “Thank God your mind has a built-in Eames, huh?”

“Yeah. I guess so.” Arthur breaks away from Nash and throws himself down on the bed, tense and furious. “Come here.”

Nash follows uncertainly. As soon as he’s close enough, Arthur grabs his arm and pulls him down, pinning him against the mattress. “I don’t know why the hell my mind turned him up in that hideous dress, though.” Although finally, after all this damn time, he does know.

Nash makes as if to stay something, but he stops.

So Nash knows, too. But he’s not with Eames anymore.

Arthur feels a flash of perhaps irrational anger and shoves Nash down harder, his hands straying to Nash’s chest. He presses hard against Nash’s breastbone, the tips of his fingers brushing against Nash’s throat.

Nash makes a slightly strangled noise, perhaps in anticipation.

Arthur kisses him desperately, mouth moving away too fast for Nash to respond, moving to kiss his throat, his collarbone, his ear, his mouth again. He can’t fucking calm down. “Oh, God,” he mutters, his fingers scrabbling against Nash’s skin.

Nash clears his throat. “I, fuck, Arthur, do you want—” He sounds terrified.

“What?” Arthur’s mouth is completely dry.

“D’you—” Nash’s voice stutters and dies in his throat, but he runs his hands through his hair and tries again. “Do you want to kill me? I, I can get the PASIV and we can—”

Arthur tries to catch his breath but he can’t, a shudder of need going through him, a moment of _yes, that_ , something Nash can draw from him far too easily. “Yeah,” he says, because what the hell else can he say?

Nash nods, not losing any of that frenetic energy they’ve both been building up. He rolls out from under Arthur and grabs the PASIV from where Arthur dropped it by the door.

His hands are shaking too much to get the IV in properly. Arthur does it for him.

The room they end up in is Arthur’s mind stripped down of anything else, a pale steel room with low lights: military, efficient.

He doesn’t stop to think, because if he does, he’s a monster. He just presses against Nash, pinning him with his weight, and kisses him.

Nash’s body tenses under him, like he isn’t sure whether or not he’s meant to kiss back. Then he does, tongue moving desperately in Arthur’s mouth. He wraps one leg around Arthur’s waist, grinding their hips together and only wincing slightly when Arthur lifts his shoulders a little and slams him against the floor.

There could be guns, but there aren’t. Arthur moves with ruthless precision, pressing both thumbs against Nash’s windpipe, wrapping his hands around the other man’s neck.

Nash makes a little sound, a surprised moan. His hands fall away from Arthur’s hips and he presses them against the floor, arching into Arthur’s hands.

Arthur can feel Nash’s pulse under his thumb. He presses harder.

Nash gasps, a choked, awful sound, half-formed. Arthur is dimly aware that Nash is trying to say something, to strike Arthur, but Arthur is too strong. He grinds against Nash, his cock already soaking his slacks with pre-come.

Nash makes a horrible sound in the back of his throat, half gasp and half moan, and Arthur increases the pressure.

Arthur grinds against Nash hard, seeing the world in jolts and flashes and Nash’s struggles get weaker. “Come on,” he breathes, hips stuttering. Even if Nash wants him to stop, it doesn’t matter, this is just a _dream_ \--

Mal’s French floods Arthur’s brain, the painful _double entendre_ of _la petite mort_ , as Nash goes still.

And then Arthur has a gun to wake himself with.

They wake.

“Are you okay?” Arthur asks. The question is the wrong one, but he’s never been the sort of person who can figure out what the right one is.

He realizes Nash is crying. “Yeah,” he says unconvincingly.

Arthur touches Nash’s shoulder tentatively and Nash just crumbles, his whole body curling toward Arthur’s.

So Arthur holds him, inappropriate as it feels.

Finally, Nash says, “Did you get off? His voice sounds hollow.

Arthur waits. Then, “Yeah.”

“Good. I didn’t,” he adds unnecessarily.

“Let’s get drunk, Arthur says.

*

There’s hardly anything open, but Arthur manages to find a twenty-four hour convenience store where he buys boxed wine and paper cups. He’d rather drink almost anything else, but he knows Nash likes this shit, and he still feels horribly guilty.

The end up drinking it together: another rental car, another street. Neither one of them says much for a while. Finally, Arthur says, “I really am sorry.” He can’t remember whether he said it before.

Nash laughs, but he sounds upset. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll just get high and forget about it.”

Arthur wants to detail everything that’s wrong with that, but it’s not really his business. “High on what?” he asks instead, because precision is something he can talk about without fucking up.

Nash looks away out the windshield, into the middle distance. “Coke, I guess,” he says, as if he doesn’t know.

Arthur makes it through another cup of wine before he takes out his phone. Even the distressing interjection of dreaming with Nash can’t erase the thread of worry he’s been feeling since Eames shut her eyes in the dream. A text message wouldn’t hurt.

Nash doesn’t stop him, doesn’t even look at him, as he types, _Where are you?_

It’s only a minute before his phone buzzes. _mombasa. why?_

Arthur watches the sky so long that it gets three shades lighter before texting back, _Just wanted to see if you were all right._

He tucks his phone back into his breast pocket, where it settles, heavy and silent. When it doesn’t buzz again, he says, “Eames is in Mombasa.”

“Huh.” After a few moments of silence, Nash says sleepily, his voice loose with wine, “I’m not doing another job with you.”

“I know,” Arthur says. “That’s okay.”

*

Two months later, Arthur is fantastically drunk in his own hotel room when his phone buzzes. Some part of him really believes that it’s Eames, and his fingers slip a little in his haste to answer it. _Cobb_ , the screen reads. He fights the familiar jolt of panic he gets whenever Cobb calls, telling himself it won’t be a disaster. Surely they’ve run out of disasters. “Arthur,” he says.

“Arthur, it’s Dom. Cobol Engineering really liked the last three jobs we did for them, and they want another extraction. A businessman in Japan.”

“Sounds good,” Arthur says blankly. He doesn’t know what he hoped for. It doesn’t matter.

“Meet you back at the hotel tomorrow morning, six o’clock,” Cobb says before hanging up.

Arthur stares at his phone for almost a minute before calling Nash.

 **Part Three**

Eames is in Mombasa when Cobol Engineering gets in touch with him. It’s hardly shocking; as he’s resting neatly at the edge of their territory, but he’s still displeased. Two of their thugs—in ill-fitting suits Eames would be proud of at another time—find him in a casino and corner him.

“Mr. James Icarus?” one of them says.

Eames is slightly annoyed to hear the alias he’s actually using at the moment batted back at him, but he nods. “Can I help you?” His accent tends a little more towards posh than usual, in some sort of bizarre defensiveness. He’s seen his mother do it, he realizes, even more irritated.

“You can help us. I’m Mr. Stevens and this is Mr. Keller.” He gestures to the other thuggish man who brackets Eames.

“Come with us, please,” Keller says.

Eames is reminded, improbably, of meeting Arthur. These men are about as far from Arthur’s polished coldness as possible, but he’s reminded nonetheless. It could be the feeling of deep concern he’s having to fight right now. Or maybe he just has Arthur on the brain.

Five minutes later, they’re at a hotel bar and Eames is pretending to drink a whiskey and listening to a proposition.

“Yes, I might be very interested in that,” he says, swirling the liquid in his glass.

The job isn’t his usual sort of thing and the Cobol thugs know it, but he’s got access to what they need.

What they need is Arthur and Cobb’s heads on a plate.

“They’re disappeared,” Stevens says quietly, sitting too close for Eames’s comfort. “Cobb and Cowell, they’re completely gone. After fucking up a job pretty colossally.”

Eames is a bit thrown by Arthur’s last name that he guards as carefully as Eames guards his first name. “I imagine I’d run, too.”

“We know you would,” Keller says, only increasing Eames’s discomfort. “So?”

“So,” Eames says carefully. “You’re looking for my help. What exactly do you need? Because I’m a forger, friend. I don’t do hits.”

Keller leans in. “Maybe you don’t as a rule, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t. And you’re in tight with those two like no one is these days. We want them found. And we want them gone.”

“And what about what I want?” Eames asks, potential future scenarios spooling out in his head. He could take the money and run, if they pay in advance. He can pretend to track Arthur and Cobb down. He can _do_ the job, just the way they want him to.

“We thought,” Stevens says, “that you might want ten thousand. And I’d beat around the bush, but somehow I don’t think you’re the sort of man to be embarrassed about the money.”

Ten thousand. Eames is, frankly, insulted. “Half up front?” he asks.

Keller nods, his smile sharp. “Absolutely. You can pick it up in the lobby in half an hour. The rest upon completion.”

Eames shakes hands with both of them and leaves the hotel with no intention of going back. He’s running low on money again, with all the excellent casinos around here, but even picking up half the money is too much of a risk. Money is nice, personal risk isn’t. He’ll steer clear of Cobol Engineering and Arthur’s wrath.

Because he needs to clear his head before doing some proper forgery on poker chips, he goes to visit Yusuf.

*

He waits to phone Yusuf until he’s right outside. Knocking would be the natural next step, but that seems a trifle straightforward for Eames’s current mood.

Yusuf answers on the third ring. “Hello?”

Relief fights a quick battle with the flight response to familiarity for a moment. “Yusuf, it’s Eames. I’m outside in the blistering heat, if you’re at all interested in letting me in.”

Yusuf sighs. “It’s been a while. Are you being chased?”

“No.” It’s almost certainly true.

Yusuf hangs up and opens the door a few seconds later. “Nice shirt,” he says, grinning. He hugs Eames awkwardly, as usual, before ushering him inside.

Eames loves Yusuf’s place. He’s only been here a handful of times, but it’s always lovely. He could almost feel at home here, which is what drives him away every time.

“Just passing by?” Yusuf asks, handing Eames a mug of something. He sounds doubtful.

Eames gives Yusuf a very genuine smile. “I heard Cobol Engineering had it in for Arthur and Cobb, so I thought I’d see if they needed any help.”

Yusuf’s eyes narrows as he takes a seat across from Eames. “Arthur and Cobb? Or Cobol?”

Eames’s habit of being deliberately obscure doesn’t fucking _work_ with people who know him. He hates that Arthur’s gotten to the point where he knows him, and Yusuf is only bearable because his tendency toward denial outweighs his tendency to meddle.

“Cobol,” Eames lies. Badly.

Yusuf laughs. “You heard they’d been doing jobs for Cobol and you came here to keep an eye on things. You’re getting sentimental in your old age.”

 _Getting_ is not the word, but Eames doesn’t bother to correct him. “Possibly.”

“And always Arthur,” Yusuf sighs, taking a sip of his drink. “Oh, that’s disgusting. I thought I’d finally gotten the hang of it, too. What is it about him, anyway? I’ve never met the man, but between what you’ve said and what Nash has said, he sounds somewhat horrific.”

“Have you seen Nash again?” Eames asks, dodging the question. “Because I did warn you. He’s not exactly reliable on a job.” All right, he’s been fucking petty in warning Yusuf against Nash, but he feels as though he’s allowed.

Yusuf frowns slightly. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask. I’m not the expert liar that you are.” He smiles ruefully. “No poker face.”

Eames ignores Yusuf and stares into his tea.

“Anyway,” Yusuf continues uncomfortably, “He needed my help. He had an allergy to Somnacin, of all things, and he was pretty well hooked on it, along with some other things. I couldn’t _not_.”

“Couldn’t not _what?_ ” Eames enquires mildly.

Yusuf coughs. “All right, okay, so I slept with him. Big mistake, won’t happen again. If you’d been honest with me about your history with him, I might not have.”

Eames sighs and shoves the tea away. “Lovely. Well, it’s your life, of course. And I’m not—we’re not anything, Nash and I.” He doesn’t even feel properly betrayed, because he has no right to. He just feels annoyed.

“You might be interested to hear that I think Nash and Arthur are,” Yusuf says, cheerful again. He stands and goes to the stove, putting water on. He’s always cooking something, whether chemical or edible. “He looked like shit when he came by, and Arthur kept phoning him. They’re definitely working together, and I’m ninety percent sure that they’re fucking, too.” He pauses. “I’m only telling you because I thought you and Arthur might be . . .”

Eames laughs, because that’s the only reaction he can manage that won’t give too much away. “We’re not, at present.”

“Mm. The dreamsharing business is certainly a trifle incestuous, isn’t it?”

Eames shrugs. “I wouldn’t know; I don’t have a family.” The lies are just a security blanket at this point.

Yusuf just shrugs right back and shakes some salt into the pot on the stove. “Anyhow, you were telling me about Arthur. And what, exactly, is so fantastic about him. Because so far you’ve only managed to make him sound like a reasonably cruel robot.”

Eames laughs again, this time because it’s actually funny. That’s why he likes spending time with Yusuf. Well, likes and hates, really. “There is that. But he sometimes gets things right, entirely by accident, I think. That must be why I keep circling around him like this. Beside, and I haven’t seen him in a while, and absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“Absence makes you lie like a rug,” Yusuf corrects. “To yourself and anyone who’ll listen. Don’t bother lying to me, though, I won’t know the difference and it’ll get confusing. What is it about Arthur _really?_ ”

Eames considers. “He makes me feel good about myself?”

Yusuf snorts. “Even I don’t believe that one. Try again.”

Eames realizes, with an odd shock, that he’s not entirely sure. He knows about people and he probably _could_ know about himself, but—Well, that’s it, isn’t it? “He’s not like people,” he says. When Yusuf raises his eyebrows, he adds, “He’s easy to be around. He’s not always trying to figure me out or get to know me, except in a purely academic sense. It’s somewhat relaxing.” He remembers Arthur’s litany of facts outside the coffee shop, facts that didn’t lead to extrapolation about the kind of person Eames is.

“Fair,” Yusuf says. “But hardly the basis for a relationship.”

“And nothing could be further for my mind,” Eames assures him, only partially lying. He might have thought it was a good idea once, but he thinks he’s over that now. Possibly. “I’m unfortunately prone to falling a bit in love over silly things, though.”

Yusuf laughs and pours something from a box into the pot. “You’re such a girl when it comes to men.”

“How terrifically sexist,” Eames responds automatically, managing to get the words out before the inevitable gut-punch hits.

Yusuf pauses, box in hand. Then he says, “Yeah. How’s that going, anyway? Are things still . . .?”

Eames’s flight instinct is ratcheted up several hundred notches. “Mm,” he says. “A bit, yes. I mean, yes. It was a touch difficult, with Nash. Things ended rather badly.”

Yusuf’s eyes flash with anger, a novel sight. Eames appreciates it more than he’s willing to say. “I see,” Yusuf says.

“I mean,” Eames continues, apparently unable to keep his mouth shut, “They were never _good_. We weren’t good together. And Christ, Yusuf, we never even _slept_ together. Not outside dreams.” He laughs a little desperately. “I’m still a fucking virgin.”

“That,” Yusuf says, “is ridiculous. We’ve got to get you laid, mate.”

It’s the only response calculated not to make Eames emote, and Eames is very thankful for it. “Thanks,” he says, “but I can handle it.” He shoots Yusuf a smile. “Now, I’ve got to get back out there and gamble my meager savings away, if you don’t mind.”

When Cobb catches up with him, it’s almost a relief.

*

Meeting up with Arthur again is awkward. He looks even thinner than usual, and more unreadable, like some sort of ironed-out paper doll.

“Arthur! Lovely to see you again,” Eames practically shouts, pumping Arthur’s hand. They didn’t leave things badly last time, but they’ve never exactly left things _well_ , so Eames is inclined to overcompensate with false friendliness.

“Not really,” Arthur says, sighing. “Why did we have to use you?”

Eames laughs. “Because I’m the best in the business, _mon petit_.” Mal’s French slips out of his mouth completely unintentionally, and it isn’t until Arthur looks stricken that Eames realizes what he’s done. That’s the trouble with forging; you pick up other people and forget to put them down.

After a moment, Arthur says tightly, “This year has been . . . not good.”

Eames takes a slightly shaky breath. “Sorry,” he says. Sorry covers just about everything, from _I’m sorry things are this way_ to _I’m sorry I left you to deal with that_. He’ll let Arthur’s response determine what he meant.

Arthur just looks at him a little blankly. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.”

It does matter, though. Everything matters, now. Eames, Arthur, and Yusuf have been popping in and out of each other’s lives for years, and now they’re all in one place. If Eames were to believe the psychology Cobb’s fond of spouting, this would be an excellent opportunity for catharsis. Eames isn’t even sure what that would look like at this point.

He enjoys working with the team, though. He spends more of his time carefully avoiding Arthur _and_ Yusuf, whenever possible. It isn’t easy, working with Arthur. Arthur, who Eames _wishes_ were just boring. He tells Eames flatly about what happened to Nash, not sounding as sorry as he should. Eames can’t bring himself to feel that sorry either, although he feels as though someone should. Still, being around Arthur is difficult for other reasons. He can’t help being reminded that Arthur was one of the few people who was kind to him about things, and he was the only one who was kind without thinking.

Meanwhile, Yusuf is being absolutely horrible in that he keeps having _emotions_. When Arthur mentions Nash’s likely fate, Yusuf looks positively stricken.

“Do you think he’s dead?” Yusuf asks.

“By now?” Arthur says, still blank. “I’d imagine.”

Eames writes on his whiteboard, his spelling worse than usual—probably on purpose; he’s not sure—until he can tune them out.

Working with Cobb is less pleasant than it used to be. Eames has seen dozens of grieving men and women over the years, but it never gets easier. He just hopes Cobb can pull it together. Even less pleasant is watching Cobb and Arthur interact.

Finally, Eames takes Arthur aside after a meeting, the warehouse empty except for them. “Arthur, a word?”

Arthur hesitates. Then he says, “Fine.”

“Cobb’s a mess,” Eames says, lowering his voice. “I don't want you to be collateral damage.”

“I don't mind being collateral damage for him.” Arthur’s voice has gone tight again, and Eames considers the conversation over.

Saito is one of the only bright spots in the whole business. He’s a puzzle to unravel, and Eames is starved for puzzles. He’s also the best sort of puzzle, because when Eames solves him, the result is pleasing. Saito is ruthless, opportunistic in a much more high-minded way than Yusuf, and also as much of a sentimental fool as Eames is. Eames sees this mostly in the way he watches Cobb, some mix of proprietary and tender. It’s calming in the storm of preparation and interpersonal prickliness.

The other bright spot is Ariadne. Eames finds herself delighted by her, charmed, refreshed. He only feels slightly annoyed by this, registering that his reaction is expected and probably what she gets from everyone.

“Do you do that on purpose?” he asks her bluntly one day when their plan is nearly complete and the others are all distracted by their own work.

“What?” she asks, frowning as she always does when she’s talking to him. Like she’s trying to figure him out.

“Try to make people like you.” He puts his feet up on an extra chair and grins at her.

To her credit, she doesn’t miss a beat. “Most people don’t, actually. Why?”

He can’t imagine not liking her. She’s the most bloody likeable person he’s ever met, with her insistent questions that are always directed at someone else and never, _never_ at him. “Just wondering. I think you’d make a good forger, with a bit of practice.”

She shakes her head, pale fingers playing with her scarf. “I don’t think so. I’m a terrible liar, and you have to be a good liar to do that, don’t you?” She fixes him with the full force of her piercing stare.

Eames decides he doesn’t like her very much after all. Or rather, he shouldn’t. He mentally kicks himself, reminding himself that if he sticks around here much longer, he’ll wind up falling for her. “Yes, love, you do.”

“And how’s that going?”

He can’t say anything. This girl who’s been at Cobb every five seconds for his most personal secrets is the last thing Eames needs redirected at him.

Her expression softens. “Look, can I give you some advice?” When he doesn’t respond, she continues, “I’d steer clear of Arthur. I mean, I _am_ steering clear of Arthur. I’m just saying. Bad idea.”

Eames considers telling her he’s been down that road, but she might have already worked it out. “Thanks.” He’ll have to avoid her, as well.

*

One might nearly say the mission goes off without a hitch. As far as Eames is concerned, it does. Afterwards, he’s exhausted, but he’s also shot through with adrenaline from a job well done. They’ve done the improbable and come back alive, every one of them. It makes Eames feel, if only for a few hours, like anything’s possible. Cobb’s catharsis theory seems to have panned out on all fronts.

After they get off the plane, Ariadne catches Eames at the baggage claim. “So,” she says.

Eames raises his eyebrows cheerfully. “So. We’ve done all right for ourselves, eh? What’re you planning on doing with your share?”

Her eyes narrow slightly. “What are you planning on doing?”

“I thought I’d buy—”

“No,” Ariadne snaps, “not with the money. What are you planning on doing now?”

The simple answer is, going back to what he did before. Running cons, forging in and out of dreams, gambling, pretending to drink. Instead, he says, in a shocking display of honesty, “I don’t know.” Nothing’s actually changed, but a thousand little things have. They’ve opened up the world of dreamsharing a bit more. Cobb’s gotten his life back. Saito has swung into their orbit.

Ariadne sighs. “So, this is how forging works, right? You start by watching people to figure them out. You see how they stand and learn the weird little idiomatic things they say. And you learn what their mind is like, first from the outside. You can learn all about them just by watching them.”

Eames’s mouth feels dry. “That’s about it,” he says.

Ariadne nods. “And I’m an architect. I can read people, too. And you’re all wrong, Eames, all patchwork. Like bad architecture. It’s like someone took a Gothic mansion and overlaid it on a farmhouse and overlaid _that_ on a skyscraper. If we’re, you know, being metaphorical.”

“And?” Eames says, fascinated. No one, _no one_ can pick him apart.

“And maybe you’d like to pretend it’s not true, but there _is_ something real under it all,” Ariadne says firmly, crossing her arms. “I’m not going to pretend I can unravel all of you after only knowing you a little while, but I’ll get there. And I’ve been _observing_ you long enough to tell what you have some stuff to work out.”

Eames realizes his hands are trying to shake, and he shoves them in his pockets. “Don’t we all.”

“No kidding.” She grabs her bag from the carousel. “Look, don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but—I think you’d be beautiful.” She flushes. “You know. I do. Just . . .” She laughs. “Let me put this in terms you’ll understand: please be less stupid.” Then she turns and walks away.

Eames lets out a breath. No one has a right to be as good at guessing as Ariadne is. Or, no, not guessing. A good forger doesn’t guess, and if anyone lets him within ten kilometers of Ariadne again, she _will_ be a good forger.

“Eames!”

He turns, immensely relieved at the interruption. “Ah, Yusuf. Shall we?”

Yusuf hefts his bag. “Absolutely. I need to get bloody drunk.”

Eames forces a smile. “Agreed. Hang on a mo’, I need to sort something quickly.” He gestures toward Arthur, who is on his way out.

Yusuf nods and gives him a warning glance.

“I _know_ ,” Eames says, and he follows Arthur.

Arthur is tugging ineffectually at the strap of his duffle bag that’s gotten tangled someone how Eames catches up to him. “Oh,” he says with a sigh, looking up. “What is it?”

“Not a brand new life, evidentially.”

Arthur laughs, which always comes as a surprise. “Just . . . Give me a few days. I’m still sort of in shock. I’ve got—” He glances at Cobb, who is greeting Miles. “I’ve got most of my family back. My _kids_. I need time to readjust. To do the grieving thing right this time. It’s going to take more than a lucky break on a job. But I think maybe this job gave us the chance we need.”

Arthur rarely makes such long—or mostly accurate—speeches about himself, so Eames listens. Then he says, “Sorry about how things went.”

Arthur sighs. “I’m not a good person, Eames. Not at all.”

Eames laughs, more out of nerves than anything else. This feels like a breakup from a relationship that never happened. “Well, when you put it like that. And what am I? A compulsive liar, a compulsive gambler, and a sentimental idiot who can't even dress himself.” And that, _that_ is pure honesty, and it hurts.

“Herself,” Arthur says.

She feels like she’s been ripped open. “Oh,” she says. “Well. Yes. Shit.”

“You’ve still got a chance, Eames,” Arthur says. “Don’t fuck it up.”

*

There aren’t a lot of things Eames has to do now. Just two, really. Both are incredibly difficult.

The first one, the one that there’s no backing down from once it’s, is phoning mum and dad.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

He sounds, as always, a little displeased, but just a little. “Who? Oh, Edward.”

“Yeah, well done. Sorry I didn’t come from Christmas last year. Or the year before. Be sure to tell Mum. And let her know I’m not going by Edward anymore.”

He sighs. “You haven’t gone by Edward in years, Edward.”

“You still fucking call me it every chance you get. I—Listen, Dad, I’m a woman. Always have been, tried to tell you, telling you know. Let Mum know, would you?”

Her father sighs again. “Yes, yes, Edward. I know that. Well, I’ll tell your mother. She won’t like it.”

Eames feels something like relief or shock, and for the first time, she wishes she had a totem. “Of course she won’t. She never likes anything. Bye, Dad.”

Yusuf, who’s seated next to her on the hotel bed, says, “How’d it go?”

She wipes her eyes, furious with herself for crying. “Well, fuck. Better than I thought. I don’t know what to do when they’re being awful.”

Yusuf laughs and touches her arm lightly. “They’re parents. You kind of have to take those moments as they come.”

“And now?” Eames says. She smooths the hideous hotel comforter under her hands compulsively, feeling like Arthur. Obsessive. Bad at emotions.

Yusuf spreads his arms. “Here we are. In a hotel again. Only now you’re not lying as much.” He sounds nearly as nervous as Eames, but that could just be adrenaline from the mission.

Eames could _not_ get used to this, she thinks, but Ariadne’s told her she has a chance and even _Arthur’s_ told her she has a chance, so she’s going to have to try it. “As long as I’m not lying, should I admit I fancy you?”

Yusuf laughs, sounding surprised. “I—really?”

Wonderful. The one time Eames has felt completely transparent to someone, and the person hasn’t noticed. “Don’t be an idiot. Of course.”

Yusuf shifts nervously. “Well . . . I mean, okay, here’s the thing. I sort of . . . When you started talking about being . . .”

“Yes?” Eames asks. “When I started talking about being a woman and you started calling me mate sixteen times in every conversation?” She never minded, really. Avoidance is something she can understand.

“I couldn’t,” Yusuf says uncomfortably. “If you were a woman, I knew I’d fall for you.”

Eames, confronted with honesty, doesn’t really know what to say. “Yusuf, mate, you’re fucking ridiculous. Kiss me.”

*

They spend the next three weeks back in Mombasa. Eames has no intention of moving in, but she doesn’t object to the idea of having a home base. Yusuf’s laboratory has always been something like that, and making it official doesn’t feel too much like being tied down. Not that she has any objections to—well. The point is, things are going surprisingly smoothly.

The first time they dream together is strange. Eames has forged women hundreds of times, but she’s never actually forged herself as a woman. Yusuf has been gently pushing her to actually take steps in real life, but dreaming is an easy start. Eames has always been far too wary about her body in dreams, never trying on anyone who felt too much like her, like what she could be, like what she is.

“Hey,” Yusuf says sternly, which is an incongruous look on him, “No cheating.”

Eames would like to explain that Yusuf is asking something completely ridiculous of her, but she’s meant to be trying for once, so she sighs and shifts, reflecting in and out of the mirror in front of her until her hair is the same shade it is in reality, her hips wider, her lips fuller.

“There, now you look like you.” Yusuf sounds approving, but Eames can pick out the thread of apprehension.

“This was a bad idea,” Eames says miserably.

Yusuf glances around at his own face reflected back at him dozens of times. “I don’t know, it could be worse. You could be Arthur.”

“I most definitely could not.” She grins at Yusuf. “Thanks for this, by the way. It’s a nice start.”

Yusuf nods. “And next?”

“Next.” Eames clears her throat and thinks about being honest, both in her body and in her mind. Yusuf doesn’t even know what a massive thing he’s asking, but Eames is giving it a try, because this time she’s not stupidly, self-destructively in love. She’s just relaxing, letting her friend call the shots. If it winds itself into a relationship, it’ll catch her enough by surprise that she won’t be able to buck it and run. “Next,” she says, “I want you to touch me, if that’s all right.”

Yusuf smiles. “Maybe. Maybe I want to wait until you’re awake. Don’t get me wrong, you’re gorgeous in here, but I want _you_.”

Eames swallows hard, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Me. And who am I?”

Yusuf flushes. “Well,” he says, “I kind of thought possibly my girlfriend?”

As far as Eames’s identity goes, that sounds like one piece of the puzzle.


End file.
